The global conveyor belt is a strong, but easily disrupted process. Research suggests that the conveyor belt may be affected by climate change. If global warming results in increased rainfall in the North Atlantic, and the melting of glaciers and sea ice, the influx of warm freshwater onto the sea surface could block the formation of sea ice, disrupting the sinking of cold, salty water. This sequence of events could slow or even stop the conveyor belt, which could result in potentially drastic temperature changes in Europe.

An influx of freshwater from melting glaciers and increasing rainfall can slow — and possibly even shut down — the ocean currents that ferry warm water from the tropics to the North Atlantic. About 10 years ago, scientists warned of a possible abrupt shutdown of this “ocean conveyor belt.” After years of closely monitoring Earth’s flowing oceans, researchers say a sudden slowdown isn’t in the cards. Some researchers report that they may now be seeing a more gradual slowing of the ocean currents. Others, meanwhile, have discovered that Earth’s ocean conveyor belt may be less of a sea superhighway and more of a twisted network of side roads.

The consequences of a sea current slowdown won’t be anywhere near as catastrophic as the over-the-top weather disasters envisioned in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, says Stephen Griffies, a physical oceanographer at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. “The doomsday scenario is overblown, but the possibility of a slowing down of the circulation is real and will have important impacts on Atlantic climates,” Griffies says.

Tracking sea surface temperatures, researchers reported last year that the Atlantic overturning circulation significantly slowed during the 20th century, particularly after 1970. Comparing the recent slowdown with past events, the researchers reported in March in Nature Climate Change that the rapid weakening of the circulation is unprecedented in the last 1,000 years.

Climate Action

After decades of troubled negotiations and false starts, 195 nations from around the world gathered last December in Paris and agreed to take action on climate change (SN: 1/9/16, p. 6). The new commitment, to reverse the rise in greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. Delegates will meet in a few years to decide whether to target a more ambitious limit of 1.5 degrees.

What’s changed is motivation, says Andrew Jones, a system dynamics modeler at Climate Interactive, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that works in partnership with MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Rather than focus on global climate benefits of curtailing fossil fuel emissions, which will take years to pan out, climate action is now increasingly driven by more immediate benefits, he says, such as improving public health. In February, researchers estimated that ambitious climate action in the United States would improve air quality enough to prevent 295,000 premature deaths by 2030 and save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars in medical costs.

“Waiting for climate results is delayed gratification…. But if you reduce burning coal, air quality improves almost immediately.”

“Waiting for climate results is delayed gratification…. But if you reduce burning coal, air quality improves almost immediately.”

Our personal vehicles are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all US emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About five pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.

In total, the US transportation sector—which includes cars, trucks, planes, trains, ships, and freight—produces nearly thirty percent of all US global warming emissions, more than almost any other sector.

Unfortunately, oil-related emissions may rise in the coming years as the oil industry extracts and refines “unconventional” oils, such as tar sands and tight oil. Using less oil—and avoiding unnecessary emission from the oil we do use—is the real solution.

Airing their considered views to the author via email and graciously giving their permission to share such insights in this book, what ‘Climate for the Layman‘ offers readers is a series of essays and articles all in date order; thus reflecting one man’s growing understanding of the use (and abuse) scientific data. The author’s own innate skepticism is manifest, which eventually leads him to question the very cornerstone of climate alarmist science – the so-called “greenhouse gas effect.”

“It is an absolute scandal that young people have been persuaded by endless repetition that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant and not an important part of the life cycle,” says Bright-Paul.

What we see is that for many the idea of man made ‘climatechange’ has too long been unquestioned Holy Writ; totally bypassing the fact that despite a few decades of moderate warming earth’s Biosphere has been evolving for millions of years with long, barren Ice Ages and wonderfully fecund and all-too-short Warm Periods.

Lamenting the cherry-picking of data and wilfully alarmist calls to scale back human industrial progress to “stop” climate change the author concludes:

“…. global warming is both vile and repugnant when this is forced on impressionable minds of children through indoctrination by our schools still teaching fraudulent IPCC dogma about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming using Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as the only reference.

That the only reasonable conclusion about this doctrine of man-made Global is both ‘vile and repugnant’ is echoed in the piece ‘The Trouble with Climate Change’ by Lord Lawson, added with Lawson’s permission. As a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer it is natural that Lawson should dwell on the economic miseries produced by this false doctrine – especially as such “remedies” to climate change are gravely felt in the Third World.”